//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5 - Indentured Servants 
// Story: The Depths of Discovery 
// by Seamserb 
//------------------------------//

By the side of a small path, a blue unicorn poses dramatically. 

“Come one, come all… come and see the most amazing magician in all of the Underworld… the great and powerful Trixie!” 

She looks around, expecting some reactions.

A few ponies walk about the trail, clearly not interested with the magician's attempts at garnering attention. 

She sighs.

One dull-looking stallion suddenly approaches her, a bit curious.

“Aight'. I’ll bite. What do ya' got?”

Trixie lights up with a smile

“Ahah! You, my friend, are in for the best showing of your life!” Trixie says, giddy.

She takes off her hat, holding it out towards the stallion. He glances down at it.

“Please put in one bit, my good sir.” the unicorn says with a smile.

The pony raises his eyebrow. “You ain’t even done a trick yet and you’re already asking for money?” 

Trixie frowns. “I’m not ASKING for money, this is a part of the show. I need a bit to do the act.”

“Do you not have a bit of your own?” he asks.

“Do YOU not want to see the greatest show ever?” she retorts.

The stallion grumbles a little, but pulls out a small bag out of his pocket. 

Reaching into it, he pulls out one bit with a scratch on it, before putting the bag away. Trixie looks at which pocket he put it into.

He appears to toss a coin into the hat. 

Trixie smiles. She puts the hat back on her head.

“Alright!” she says. She immediately begins to do some weird motions and movements with her legs and eyes, while also humming. The stallion looks a bit unimpressed.

She then reaches into his ear, and pulls out a bit.

“Is THIS your bit?” She asks, with a smirk.

“Nope.” 

He shows his hoof. The bit with the scratch is still right there. 

Trixie seems confused. 

“Wait then what did you put into the—”

She takes off her hat, but feels some resistance. 

“Wha—”

She feels her mane, immediately touching something sticky. She recoils in shock and surprise. 

The oaf threw a piece of gum in there!

“AH! What is wrong with you?!” She yells, trying to get the gum out of her hair. The stallion chuckles. 

Trixie looks back at him with a fury. “You little—”

A laughter suddenly gets both their attention. On the other side of the trail, sitting against a shack, lies a pink pony wearing a beret to cover her eyes, along with a bag to her side. She looks up, still laughing.

“That’s way funnier than any of your actual tricks!” the pony says, smirking. 

Trixie glares at the pink pony, looking even angrier than before. 

“Pinkie Pie…” 

The stallion looks confused. “You two’ know each other?”

Trixie snaps back at her. “Know her? This clown is my rival. She thinks that she’s a better street performer than me.” The unicorn says with a venomous tone.

Pinkie just smiles back. “I KNOW I’m the better one. You just can't accept it!” She laughs, tauntingly. 

The stallion is a bit invested now.

“What can ya do?” he asks Pinkie. 

Pinkie feigns bewilderment. 

“What can I do??? More like what CAN'T I do? Tell me something to do, and I’ll do it baby!” She says with a smirk.

The stallion thinks of something to say, but Trixie beats him to it.

“Juggle.” She says with a smirk. Trixie knows Pinkie isn’t good at juggling. 

Pinkie grimaces a little.

“O-okay…” She says, a bit shakily. 

Pinkie reaches into her bag, pulling out a few small rubber balls. 

“I was hoping to do some cool bouncing stuff with these… but oh well.” she sighs. 

Trixie and the stallion both look at her, Trixie with anticipation for failure, and the stallion with investment. 

Pinkie hesitates for a moment, and then throws the first ball into the air…

Immediately, she throws all the balls into the air at once, and begins to juggle them easily.

The two spectators look shocked.

“Aw, what?!” Trixie exclaims. She got played!

The stallion looks amazed. “Woah.” he says, getting a bit closer to look.

Some more ponies nearby begin to see the spectacle, also stopping to take a gander. Eventually there's somewhat of a tiny crowd. 

Pinkie hums as she does progressively more complex juggling patterns. At one point she even balances a ball on her nose, and at another she stands on only one hoof. 

Finally, she throws them all into the air directly above, and quickly opens her bag while holding it in front of her. All the balls fall in perfectly.

She takes a bow as some of the spectators clap or cheer. She takes off her beret and slides it in front of her.

“I take cash or credit – just kidding. Nopony uses credit out here!” She jokes. A few bits are thrown into the hat. Trixie grumbles.

 The stallion reaches to find his coin-bag, but he suddenly notices it’s gone. 

“What?!” He says. He looks behind him to see Trixie has completely disappeared. He looks back at Pinkie, only to see she has disappeared too.





Pinkie and Trixie reconvene near an empty building, snickering to themselves. They lay out their plunder in front of them. 

A few dozen bits, some small purses and bags, and even a small piece of gem jewelry. The two high-hoof.

“Told you the ‘bad at juggling’ thing would work!” Pinkie says.

Trixie smirks. “I didn’t doubt that it would, but not to this level! This is probably our biggest haul this whole month! I mean, look at this thing…” Trixie says, looking at the gem. “Who knows how much it's worth?”

Pinkie puts a hoof to her chin. “Maybe we should bring it back to the Troupe?” she asks. Policy says that anything like jewelry or gold and such should be returned ASAP.

Trixie eyes around briefly. “Orrrr…” she says, glancing at Pinkie.

Pinkie glances back. “Orrrr..?” She responds, somewhat confused.

“I know a guy who could get this appraised for us. Maybe even buy it. If it’s really good, who knows how many bits we could spend?!” She asks. 

Pinkie frowns. “But that’s against the rules!” 

“Rules-smooles. We just robbed like, five ponies. Besides, look at your hat. Or my mane!” Trixie says.

Pinkie glances over to her beaten and old beret. Its age is starting to show. Meanwhile, Trixie still picks the gum out of her mane. 

“Alright… but you promise it’s not somewhere dangerous, right..?” Pinkie asks, relenting. 

Trixie smiles. “Of course not. I would NEVER take us somewhere like that.”





Trixie and Pinkie overlook a large, flat gulch. On top of it, a hastily set up ‘flea market’ is established — emphasis on the ‘flea’ part. 

The place looks more like a shanty town than anything. The duo can see various unscrupulous looking figures at a distance.

Pinkie turns to Trixie slowly, a bit worried. “This place looks dangerous to me.” she says.

“Well, it’s not. Just keep to yourself and nothing will happen.” the unicorn instructs.

“But keeping to myself is hard!” 

“You know what will be harder if you dont? Eating without a feeding tube. Now let’s go.” Trixie says, proceeding towards the market.

Pinkie frowns, but follows.

The inside of the market is just as expected from afar. Tons of different ponies of all different creeds mingle, wearing outfits that look like they just came out of a bad crossover. Pinkie sees ponies wearing too much armor, not ENOUGH clothes, and a few cult-looking dudes. There’s even one guy who looks like a pirate. 

Pinkie stays as close to Trixie as possible, who strolls through like nothing’s amiss. Pinkie notices that they AREN’T getting any looks or glares, strangely.

“How come anyone isn’t looking at us funny? I thought outlaws always did bad stuff like that!” 

“First of all; outlaw is an outdated and bigoted term. They prefer ‘Unlawful Citizen’. Secondly, like I said; keep to yourself, and nothing will go wrong. Besides, there’s a lot more interesting folk here than you or I.” She subtly gestures to somepony in the distance. 

Pinkie's eyes follow the gesture, and then widen. The pony is very clearly unnatural looking. His pupils are small, barely visible, and his scleras are dark. His body has a weird texture, and even has fangs.

“I-is that a mutant?” Pinkie whispers. She’s heard of them before, but never seen one in-person.

Trixie looks shocked. “Pinkie! No! That’s a very cruel term. The proper term nowadays is ‘Mutaquine’ You’d probably get smacked silly if they hear you use ‘mutant’ around here.” 

“Wouldn’t that only apply to ponies, though? What if they’re like… something else..?” 

Trixie shrugs. “Think of it like how everypony calls guns ‘guns’ regardless of if they’re a musket or flintlock or whatever. Better to be safe than sorry.” she explains. 

Pinkie is about to respond, when Trixie spots somepony in the distance, leaning against a small tent. It’s noticeably a bit secluded from the rest of the dense market.

“Found my guy. I’ll make it quick.” She says, beginning to walk off.

Pinkie follows, but Trixie stops her.

“Wait. He’s one of those… skittish types. He’ll probably get cold feet if he sees me coming with somepony else.” 

“What about-”

“Just stay… like, here. Don’t start anything, don't use the terms ‘outlaw’, ‘mutant’, or ‘slave’, and you should be good!” Trixie says, backwards walking with a smile, before fully turning off.

Pinkie frowns as she tries to stand still. She can feel her hoof begin to tap.

After a little while, Pinkie is about to start wandering, but stops when she notices Trixie coming back. The unicorn has a strangely disheartened expression, and glances back at the tent a few times, but once she notices Pinkie looking at her it quickly changes to a more expected expression of excitement.

“Okay. My guy was able to appraise AND buy it from me. I had to haggle a little bit, but we settled on… 50,000 bits!” she says, gleefully. 

Pinkie’s jaw nearly drops. “WOAH! We’re rich!” She says.

The unicorn nods. “Mhm. Now we—”

“Who is your guy, anyways?” 

Trixie frowns slightly. “An old friend. Don’t worry about it.” She says, a bit dismissively.

“Okay!” Pinkie isn’t fully satisfied with that expression, but her mind is on the money right now.

Trixie begins to feel the weight of the bag, along with metaphorical weight of the eyes of a few other ponies looking at them.

“We should probably get out of here before something stupid happens.” the unicorn says, shifting the weight on her back.

“Agreed!” 

As the two walk away, they pass by what appears to be a shoddily made stage, with an auction in progress. Various cages sit to the side in a line, presumably to be pulled up one by one. 

Pinkie walks past the line-up, only to suddenly back-pedal rapidly and turn her head. Trixie looks back, surprised at Pinkie’s sudden motion.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Trixie, are you seeing this?” Pinkie whispers, hoofing towards one of the cages. 

Trixie glances over, tilting her head. “What’s wrong? It's just a Leper.” she says, looking over at a cage with a large and spindly frog-like creature.

Pinkie quickly turns back towards Trixie. “What? No, I meant the one to the left of that one.”

The two look towards the left slightly and see a small yellow pegasus with a pink mane. She’s curled up and shaking, visibly scared. Her ‘clothes’ look like they’re made up of leaves and vines. 

She curls up further as the Leper in the next-cage over coughs towards her. 

“What the heck are they doing? Are they selling her like some kind of animal??” Pinkie asks, a bit worried.

“Seems like it.” 

“Isn’t that like slave—”

Trixie glances over at Pinkie with a neutral expression.

“Just tell me the proper term already!” Pinkie exclaims. 

“ ‘Indentured Servant.’  ‘Slave’ stopped being used by Slavers for PR reasons.” 

“But it’s the same thing right??”

“Yeah but now it’s ‘indentured servitude’ instead of slavery so—”

Pinkie cuts her off. “Whatever whatever instead of this and that whatever! I want to help her.” 

Trixie looks bewildered. “The only way you’re gonna help her is if you can buy her before somepony else does."

“Well I guess it's lucky that I know a pony who has just gotten 50,000 bits!” 

Trixie’s eyes widen, realizing what Pinkie is implying.

“No. Nope. We are not doing that. Don’t even think about it.” 





Trixie and Pinkie stand in the crowd alongside other ponies, auction already underway. The auctioneer, a stallion wearing a flat red hat and the Underworld's most obvious evil mustache talks so fast that they can barely understand him. 

“This is so stupid.” Trixie says with a sigh.

“Shh!” another pony says to her. Trixie glares at them, before looking forward again.

Various creatures and other items are auctioned off rapidly. There’s a fight or two, along with some curses said, but that’s as smooth as you’ll get for an unlawful citizen flea market.

Eventually, the final cage is dragged in, the crowd ‘oohhs’, seeing its content. 

Instead of some strange creature like the rest, it’s an unusually dressed pegasus mare. 

The crowd murmurs amongst itself. Most aren’t surprised at the presence of a pony as one of the auctions, but rather the nature of this one. She looks mystical, at least as mystical as a quivering and scared captive can be. She wears a dress that looks like it's made of leaves, vines, and roots.

Trixie looks completely unamused, while Pinkie looks with some determination. 

The auctioneer smirks, seeing the good reactions.

 “Now thisahere pegasus says she's from the mythical ‘Gaia’s Grove’ thatsa right we gotta exotic plant pegasus right here! Starting price is 5000 bits canna get 5000 bits?”

Pinkie and Trixie have an equal amount of appalment when they hear the price – Trixie more so because she couldn’t believe a seemingly regular pegasus would be selling for this much. Is it because of the dress? Heck, she should start doing this if ponies will pay that much for a fancy looking slave...

Some figures in the crowd raise their hooves. 

“6000 bits!” One shouts.

“8000 bits!” Another.

Pinkie stares back at Trixie with some puppy eyes.

Trixie sighs.

“15,000 bits!” She shouts, reluctantly. The crowd ‘ooohs’. The auctioneer smiles harder.

There. It may have been a big chunk of their new change, but surely—

“20,000 bits!” Another pony yells. Trixie’s eyes shoot over to their direction with shock.

WHAT?!

“40,000 bits.” 

Everyone looks over to see a very clearly conspicuous robed pony. Trixie notices the robes look like they're from the Clade. Anypony bold enough to wear those in public surely has something about them. 

Nopony even cares about that right now though, with them all being flabbergasted by the heights of which the bid is reaching. Even the auctioneer looks shocked. 

Trixie quickly leans over to Pinkie. “Okay, it’s clear that we picked the wrong day to bid! I’m not spending the entire purse on this random pegasus we don’t even know!” 

“We’re in too deep now!” Pinkie responds.

Pinkie Pie stands up on her tippy-hooves, and hollers “50,000!” 

The crowd once again ‘ooohs’. The robed pony glances over to them silently. 

This has to be it. There’s no way.

“80,000 BITS!” the robed pony yells, raspy voice and all. 

Trixie looks in complete shock, but glances over to see Pinkie looking even more determined.

“We literally have nothing else to bid with, Pinkie! Unless you happen to secretly have another 50,000 bits lying around!” 

Pinkie Pie takes a deep breath, preparing herself.

“200,000 BITS!!!!” she screams, jumping into the air. It’s almost like the entire market goes quiet hearing this absurd number. 

Trixie feels like she’s about to faint.

The auctioneer is almost blown off his feet from the metaphorical power of the number. Even the robed pony relents, silently backing off.

After a few moments of waiting, nopony even attempts to match or surpass that number. The auctioneer quickly points Pinkie out. 

“You there! Fine pink mare! Come on up here!” he says, giddily.

Pinkie quickly does so, scampering onto the stage next to the cage. The crowd mutters at this unusually clean and normal looking pony, out-of-place compared to the rest of the individuals here. Even the captive pegasus pauses her quivering, a bit confused.

The auctioneer swings open the cage, letting the pegasus shakily walk out. She has a chain on one of her legs, which the auctioneer hands to Pinkie with a smile. 

Pinkie stands there for a moment holding the chain.

Now what?

She’s brought back to attention when the auctioneer clears his throat, gesturing with his hoof. The money.

“Oh. Right… the bits.” she says, slowly trailing off.

The auctioneer raises an eyebrow. 

There's an awkwardly long pause. Trixie bites her lip. 

Suddenly, Pinkie takes off sprinting, pulling the pegasus with her. “RUN!” she yells to the captive, who does.

The auctioneer is stunned.

“THIEF!” he screams, his auction accent completely gone.

One pony speaks up in the crowd. “Like half of us are thieves, man.”

The auctioneer turns to him with a snap. “Okay but she’s stealing from me! And by extension you all! That’s like— ok you know what—”

He takes a deep breath. 

“WHOEVER CATCHES THOSE RUNAWAYS GETS 100,000 BITS” he roars. 

That certainly gets the crowd's attention. They all turn towards the direction of the duo.

Trixie gulps. This can't end well.





Pinkie and the pegasus sprint away as fast as they can, but unfortunately for them, the bidding stage was near the center of the market. Even with a good head-start, they’re still deep within it before they hear rapidly approaching noises behind them. 

Thankfully, it seems like the general chaos of the market is doing a good job at concealing the situation. Only the ponies behind them seem to know—

“STOP THEM AND GET MONEY!” a pegasus from above yells from above. Ponies ahead look up, and then towards the duo. 

Crap.

Pinkie takes a sharp 90 degrees turn along a shack as a wave of ponies charge past into original direction, crashing into the ponies coming from behind. They hear loud crashes as various stands fall over and break.

“What’s going on?! Who are you?!” The pegasus shouts, still running behind Pinkie.

“Not important right now! Just run!” Pinkie yells back.

The duo continue to run through the market, swerving as needed to avoid groups whenever they try to pincer or flank them.

Pinkie sees a pony ahead pointing a gun, specifically a flintlock straight at them. Her eyes widen.

She sees the auctioneer suddenly punch him across the face, sending him to the ground.

“Don’t shoot them, fool!” he yells, turning to them. His stare meets their eyes. 

“I want them alive. Both of them.” 

Pinkie gulps.

Wait. 

If the auctioneer is in front of them… 

Pinkie smacks her forehead. She realized they accidentally did a U-turn during the swerving. This is quickly validated when she sees a huge mob coming from straight ahead, and behind the auctioneer.

The auctioneer laughs, but then the pony he punched suddenly gets up and grabs him by the collar. The auctioneer stops laughing and glares down, as the two begin to scuffle. 

“Other way! Other way!!” Pinkie yells, flipping around with the pegasus in tow and taking off again. 

Pinkie is starting to feel the heat from the chase, literally and metaphorically. She was never one for endurance running.

“Can you fly?!” Pinkie asks. 

“They bound my wings!” the pegasus cries. 

Pinkie briefly glances back, seeing the pegasi’s wings are indeed tied together with some crude rope. 

Before Pinkie can even think about how messed up that is, she sees a pony standing on the edge of some sort of make-shift tower ahead of them. He looks like he’s about to perform the underworlds nastiest 'Pony’s Elbow'.

Suddenly, one of the legs of the tower is smacked aside by a blue energy. The pony yelps as the tower falls, safely smashing out of the path of the two. 

Trixie?!

The pair briefly stops to see Trixie keeping up with them from the side. “Keep going!” She yells. Pinkie sees her telekinetically hitting a few of the pursuers with various objects, and knocking over stands. 

Trixie grimaces. She’s definitely being banned from this year's Unlawful-con.

The help from Trixie is nice, but unfortunately it’s just getting more ponies involved in the chase, reasonably mad at their stands getting trashed. 

Pinkie looks ahead.

“Black tar! Come get your black tar!” One vendor yells. 

Pinkie kicks out the leg of the table as she runs, causing it to spill out behind her.

A few particularly fast pursuers from behind get caught up in the slick, uncontrollable sliding forward.

“Feathers! Come get your feathers!” Another vendor yells.

Pinkie kicks out of the leg of this table as well, obviously.

The pursuers slip straight into the cloud of feathers in front of them, making them look like imitation griffons.

Pinkie looks back briefly, and can’t help but laugh. “Ahaha!”

She turns back forward, only to see a pegasus swooping straight towards her. 

“Ahaha— AHHHHH” She barely ducks it. 

The captive pegasus has the intuition to duck as well. The pursuing pegasus stops at the other side in the air, and is about to swoop again when he gets hit with a small rock flung by Trixie, being enough to knock him away.

Pinkie looks back to see where he fell, but sees something else. 

Strangely, some of their pursuers are inexplicably freaking out. They look like they’re reacting to things that aren’t actually there, like one of them stopping, dropping, and rolling. Another one desperately tries to reach for something on his back, spinning around while screaming.

This place is a freak show.

Eventually, the duo manage to ‘escape’ the market, coming into a completely empty area – however, it’s empty for a good reason. They’re right next to a giant cliff. 

Pinkie bites her lip. This was NOT the way they came in from.

She turns around, only to see a small army has congregated behind her, spilling out of the market’s various crevices. 

Trixie manages to get through the crowd, and joins the duo.

The auctioneer shoves his way to the front, some fresh bruises on his face along with a dented hat, but he still locks his eyes on the trio.

“It was fun, but this is the end of the line.” he barks. “I hope you’re prepared to serve as indentured servants for the rest of your lives!” 

Pinkie and Trixie scan their surroundings. Every possible path is blocked.

Except… maybe for one.

The crowd approaches slowly. 

“There’s nowhere to run!” one of them says.

Pinkie looks behind her. There’s no other option.

“Except for one!” 

Without hesitation, she grabs the bonds tying up the pegasus’s wings, and manages to pull them off. The pegasus quickly looks back, her freed wings spreading out. 

Trixie’s eyes widen.

“Pinkie! What are you— AHHHHHHHH!!!” 

Pinkie grabs both of them tightly, before jumping off the cliff. The bag of bits slips off of Trixies back. 

“NO!” She yells, as they fall. 

The three disappear past the edge.

There’s a pause. 

The crowd is flabbergasted. They run up to the edge of the cliff. After  quickly tearing apart the bag and pillaging its contents, they look off the edge, trying to see where the three splatted. But instead, they see a strange and tall shape in the distance.

Sure enough, they see something tall flying – no, gliding away.

The pegasus keeps her wings as taut as possible, scared out of her mind. Pinkie holds onto one of the pegasus’s legs, while also holding onto one of Trixies fore-legs below her. The three look like a monkey chain.

Trixie’s horn glows, using her magic to lessen the weight she and Pinkie inflict on the poor pegasus. It’s shoddy, but the three are safely floating off. The Unicorns face is one of anguish due to losing the money, but she keeps them afloat anyways.

The auctioneer is the first to react to the absurd display. 

“WHAT!” 

He snatches a flintlock from a nearby pony, and aims it at the trio. Pinkie looks back, her eyes nearly bulging out her head. They’re screwed now.

The auctioneer aims a bit shakily… but he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. 

He groans, throwing the weapon aside, before turning around and walking away from the cliff.

Perhaps he had a change of heart?

With the trio out of reach for all but the bravest of pegasi, and the main instigator having given up, the crowd slowly deteriorates, sulking back towards the damaged market.

Pinkie, still looking back, notices the same robed pony from before still looking at them, now alone at the edge. He looks like he’s laughing, but she can’t hear anything from this distance.

What a creep.

Turning back around, they have much bigger problems ahead of them. That being that there appears to be nothing ahead of them. 

“D-do you know where we’re going… Trixie..?” Pinkie asks, a bit worried.

“No, Pinkie. We’re literally floating off into literal darkness. I do NOT know where we are going.” 

The pegasus just whimpers.

The three simply glide off into the unknown.